Majolica

Majolica, also spelled maiolica, tin-glazed earthenware produced from the 15th century at such Italian centres as Faenza, Deruta, Urbino, Orvieto, Gubbio, Florence, and Savona. Tin-glazed earthenware—also made in other countries, where it is called faience or delft—was introduced into Italy from Moorish Spain by way of the island of Majorca, or Maiolica, whence it derived the name by which it was known in Italy.

The majolica painter’s palette was usually restricted to five colours: cobalt blue, antimony yellow, iron red, copper green, and manganese purple; the purple and blue were used, at various periods, mainly for outline. A white tin enamel was used also for highlights or alone on the white tin glaze in what was called bianco sopra bianco, “white on white.”

The shapes most often employed were the albarello, or drug jar, of Middle East origin; a type of ewer evidently derived from the Greek oinochoe; and, above all, the piatta da pompa, or show dish, in the istoriato, an Italian narrative style from the early 16th century that uses the pottery body solely as support for a purely pictorial effect. Although violating aesthetic rules in their subordination of shape to decoration, such wares remain works of great skill, as well as beauty.

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one of the oldest and most widespread of the decorative arts, consisting of objects made of clay and hardened with heat. The objects made are commonly useful ones, such as vessels for holding liquids or plates or bowls from which food can be served.

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(Italian: “white on white”), mode of decoration originally practiced on 16th-century Urbino and Faenza majolica, or tin-glazed earthenware. It consisted of designs in an opaque, cool-white colour executed on a warmer, milk-white tin glaze. The technique was broadly revived about 1745...